Thursday, November 11, 2010

I'm such a hack

ZPs: Enslaved and Fallout New Vegas. XPs: Shaky cam and how Enslaved should have been. What, you want fancy graphics and quotes with those? I'm a busy man. Also, trivia night at the Mana Bar returns to its fortnightly schedule with the next one being next Tuesday on the 16th, another little window of colour and amusement in your otherwise grey, depressing lives.

I've been getting reports that Firefox has been reporting my original site (www.fullyramblomatic.com) as an attack site. Indeed, the redirect page appeared to have been hacked and filled with spam links. I've now removed it and put the original back in, and replaced the main index of the old site archive just in case, so hopefully that solves the issue and you can jolly well tell Firefox to stop being such a fussy nanny browser.

And finally, a thought for the day: a 'relationship' occurs when two people run out of things to say to each other, so they shut each other up by putting their genitals in each other's mouths. A break up comes about when they run out of things to do with those, too.

Chrome also identifies your site as malware- is that what they're calling humour these days?

More seriously, now that you've removed the spam links, Google and Mozilla will re-scan the site in about 90 days and re-classify it as safe. It also says for you to visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ to force them to do it NOW.

My name is Alex Goldman and I'm the producer of an American public radio show called On the Media. I am interested in reaching you because we're going an episode on video games, and I thought you would be a great voice. I tried finding an email address for you, but you are indeed an elusive fellow. If you could email me at otmproducer1(at)wnyc(dot)org, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,Alex GoldmanWNYC's On the Mediaotmproducer1(at)wnyc(dot)orghttp://www.onthemedia.org

On one hand, that seems like a really stupid attempt to convince Croshaw to email "On the Media." On the other hand, I've done crazier things at work while trying to get a hold of people who are hard to get a hold of -- and this IS public radio we're talking about.

But on the other hand, I have Yahtzee's email in my gmail account, for some reason.

Yahtzee is easily at least as clever as I am, and even I can work out that any sudden interest expressed by The Mainstream Media(TM) in video games -- an industry that for its entire existence has been treated by the Mainstream Media(TM) like some unsightly boil on their grandmother's neck, i.e. something that gets studiously ignored except when it "acts up" -- must have been precipitated by the industry "acting up," such as some proximate event.

And in this case, I surmise that the proximate event is California's anti-video game law whose (lack of) merits were recently argued before SCOTUS. So, the formula is simple: Find some "name" in the video game industry to argue the Freedom of Speech point of view; and to argue the anti-Free Speech point of view, find some screeching Family Values automaton, preferably female, blonde, and with children she needs to "protect" from the "scourge" of "evil" video games. Three. Two! ONE! DEBATE!!!

Except... There is no debate. In every state where retrograde mouth-breathers have passed anti-video game laws, they have been struck down in the lower courts as unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment.

Every. Last. One.

The "Family Values" contingent have absolutely no basis for their so-called point of view. They are simply wrong. Games are Speech. The End.

So, if I were Yahtzee, I might want to avoid getting pulled in to that sort of dishonest debate.

As for what On The Media could do to fill the time instead, I might write the following opening lines:

"On November 2nd, the US Supreme Court heard arguments on California's law criminalizing the selling to minors of video games deemed 'violent.' Despite being watched hopefully by nearly a dozen state Attorneys General nationwide, the law is widely expected to be overturned as unconstitutional, as every other attempt by states to ban video games sales based on their content has failed, having all been found unconstitutional by lower courts. A final decision is expected by mid-2011.

"Next up On The Media: Former President Bush has been appearing on news and talk shows selling his new book. Yet no one seems to be asking him even remotely tough questions, such as why he continues to insist in his book that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. Press timidity, even in the face of disgraced authority -- that's next."

That's a horribly depresssing view of relationships to espouse and at the risk of invoking a whooosh sound, anyone who even sort of believes a relationship is as described is going to have terrible relationships by way of self-fulfilling prophecy and overloaded cynicism.